"God Is Dead": What Nietzsche Really Meant | Big Think

Friedrich Nietzsche: 'God is Dead' { Philosophy Index }

By nihilism Nietzsche means the historical development, i.e. event, that the uppermost values devalue themselves, that all goals are annihilated, and that all estimates of value collide against one another.

God Is Dead: What Next - Western Buddhist Review

As Reginster (2006: 222–7) observes, it is more difficult toexplain the role of the third constraint, eternity. It isnevertheless clear that it does make a practical difference: to put asharp point on it, return to Clark’s marriage analogy; one mightwell be very happy to live one’s marriage again (once, or twice,or even many times), but still prefer some variation in spousalarrangements over the course of eternity—indeed, Milan Kundera(1991) seems to be putting his character Agnes in something like thatsituation in his use of the Nietzschean thought experiment early on inImmortality. Reginster proposes that the eternity constraintis meant to reinforce the idea that the thought experiment calls foran especially wholehearted form ofaffirmation—joy—whose strength is measured by theinvolvement of a wish that our essentially finite lives could beeternal. More modestly, one might think that Nietzsche considered itimportant to rule out as insufficient a particular kind ofconditional affirmation, which is suggested by the Christianeschatological context, and which would leave in place the judgmentthat earthly human life carries intrinsically negative value. Afterall, the devout Christian might affirm her earthly life as a testof faith, which is to be redeemed by an eternal heavenly rewardshould one pass that test—all the while retaining her commitmentthat, considered by itself, earthly life is a sinful condition to berejected. Imagining that my finite life recurs eternallyblocks this avenue (and returns the focus of assessment to the finitefeatures of real life) by supposing that there will never be a pointat which one could pretend that finite life is once and for all“over and done with” (Anderson 2005: 198, 203; 2009:237–8).

God is dead Nietzsche – Hard Times Ministries

Nietzsche’s appeals to the notion of perspective (or,equivalently in his usage, to an “optics” of knowledge)have a positive, as well as a critical side. Nietzsche frequentlycriticizes “dogmatic” philosophers for ignoring theperspectival limitations on their theorizing, but as we saw, hesimultaneously holds that the operation of perspective makes apositive contribution to our cognitive endeavors: speaking of (what hetakes to be) the perversely counterintuitive doctrines of some pastphilosophers, he writes,

Much of Nietzsche’s reaction to the theoretical philosophy ofhis predecessors is mediated through his interest in the notion ofperspective. He thought that past philosophers had largely ignored theinfluence of their own perspectives on their work, and had thereforefailed to control those perspectival effects (BGE 6; seeBGE I more generally). Commentators have been both fascinatedand perplexed by what has come to be called Nietzsche’s“perspectivism”, and it has been a major concern in anumber of large-scale Nietzsche commentaries (see, e.g., Danto 1965;Kaulbach 1980, 1990; Schacht 1983; Abel 1984; Nehamas 1985; Clark1990; Poellner 1995; Richardson 1996; Benne 2005). There has been asmuch contestation over exactly what doctrine or group of commitmentsbelong under that heading as about their philosophical merits, but afew points are relatively uncontroversial and can provide a useful wayinto this strand of Nietzsche’s thinking.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Wikipedia

That such an interpretation of Nietzsche’s intentions is evenpossible shows how great a challenge these explosive, carefullycrafted texts pose to their readers.

Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

(It is to this compressed formulation, and not the entirety of thesection, that Nietzsche returns when he wraps up his interpretation inGM III, 28.)

Nietzsche, Friedrich | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Some of Nietzsche’s books (notably The Birth ofTragedy, the Genealogy, and the Antichrist)offer greater continuity of argumentation, but even there, he willoften take advantage of section breaks to drop one thread of reasoningand move on to apparently unrelated points, leaving the reader topiece together how the various aspects of his case are supposed to fittogether (GM II is a notoriously challenging case in point).Thus Spoke Zarathustra is unified by following the career ofa central character, but the unity is loose andpicaresque-like—a sequence of episodes which arrives at asomewhat equivocal (or at a minimum, at a controversial)conclusion that imposes only weak narrative unity on the whole.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Wikiquote

Nietzsche’s actual psychological explanations rely heavily onappeals to sub-personal psychological attitudes. As Janaway (2009: 52)observes, a great many different kinds of attitude enter theseaccounts (including not only the standard beliefs and desires ofcurrent-day moral psychology, but also “wills”, feelings,sensations, moods, imaginings, memories, valuations, convictions, andmore), but arguably the core attitudes that do the most work for himare drives and affects. These attitude types havebeen intensively studied in recent work (see esp. Richardson 1996 andKatsafanas 2011b, 2013, 2016; see also Anderson 2012a, Clark andDudrick 2015). While much remains controversial, it is helpful tothink of drives as dispositions toward general patterns of activity;they aim at activity of the relevant sort (e.g., an eating drive, adrive for power), and they also represent some more specific object oroccasion of the activity in a particular case (e.g., this ice cream,or overcoming a particular problem in the course of writing a paper).Affects are emotional states that combine a receptive and feltresponsiveness to the world with a tendency toward a distinctivepattern of reaction—states like love, hate, anger, fear, joy,etc. Typically, the sub-personal attitudes postulated inNietzsche’s psychological explanations represent the world inone way or another. Since he endorses Leibniz’s thought thatrepresentation, not consciousness, is the decisive mark of the mental(GS 354), it is reasonable to treat these attitudes asdistinctively psychological, whether they are conscious or not.